The legacy of Cameron's decision to pull out of the EPP was illustrated today when he did not attend its pre-summit meeting in Marseille attended by Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and José Manuel Barroso.

At a pre-summit meeting with Mrs Merkel in Berlin, Mr Sarkozy, who faces elections in April, insisted the tax remained a top priority.

Kommersant reports that the Kremlin proposed the idea of a private, pre-summit meeting as a way to discuss contentious issuesmost notably democracy and frozen conflicts in Transnistria and Georgiawhich could potentially embarrass Moscow during its official meetings with G8 leaders.

Germany blocked a pre-summit meeting of eurozone leaders to discuss the Greek crisis.

In 1986, Resnicoff was sent to Iceland to lead Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) services during the historic Reagan-Gorbachev pre-summit meetings.

The G8 financial ministers began pre-summit meetings on 30 May 2007.

In a pre-summit meeting with Italy's Mario Monti, the German chancellor said Germany would "perhaps pay in more capital at the start of the ESM, because if capital is invested it sends an important signal to the markets."

In Geneva, an American official involved in pre-summit meetings with a Soviet delegation said there were signs that Moscow might put forward a new timetable before or during the summit meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Washington next month.

Eventually we decided that the Russians had to let the deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, who was in Moscow for pre-summit meetings, see Mr. Yeltsin within 24 hours or the trip was off.

A pre-summit meeting aimed at forging an agreement on market-opening measures under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade will take place in Tokyo next week.